CleanCloset | Devpost

Inspiration

We were inspired by the enormous humanitarian and environmental issues that textile waste presents: donated, low-quality clothing from the West piles up in poorer countries like Ghana. Communities living near the dumps are exposed to toxic smoke from burning clothing, and textile scraps often block the drains, causing flooding and malaria. Additionally, micro plastics from the clothing leach into the oceans, drinking water, and soil, which eventually ends up in human bloodstreams. Textile waste is difficult to process or recycle. In America, 11.3 billion tons of textile waste (that's 85% of all textiles produced!) are thrown away each year. We decided that we could approach this problem by stopping it at its root: hyper-consumerism. Simply put, people buy too many clothes that are trendy for a short amount of time and quickly forget about them when they go out of style.

What it does

CleanCloset tracks a user's clothing purchases. Based on the user's inputs for the item's brand and composition as well as how many items a user has purchased, CleanCloset calculates a sustainability score.

How we built it

We used Xcode, Firebase, and Swift to build an iOS app.

Challenges we ran into

One challenge we ran into was with version control because the different dependencies and versions of Xcode installed on different computers led to issues when pushing and pulling the project.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Three of the team members had no experience with Xcode or Swift so we were proud of that fact that we were able to get the app working and reading and writing data to Firebase.

What we learned

Everyone on the team learned a lot about iOS app development and how to integrate Swift with Firebase.

What's next for CleanCloset

We want to expand CleanCloset beyond solely clothing. Additionally, CleanCloset could implement features such as suggesting alternative, more eco-friendly products based on the user's budget. CleanCloset hopes ton maintains an all-time leaderboard that compares your score to a select group of friends to encourage sustainable choices.